Hamilton has yet to win a race in 2012, while Button won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix but has only scored two points in the last three races to slip 31 points behind championship leader Fernando Alonso. While Whitmarsh admitted he wasn't pleased with the way McLaren's season was going so far, he said that both drivers were still well in the title hunt.

"You're never satisfied," Whitmarsh said. "But I think Lewis is scoring points in every race, he's keeping his head and I think he's doing a very good job. It's still anyone's to play for, so we and Lewis and Jenson can win this year's championship. So after six races I think that's good for the sport. People now say this sort of randomness is unattractive then that's just a 180 to what people felt a few years ago when it was very predictable."

Despite finding it difficult to optimise the car on this year's Pirelli tyres, Whitmarsh said he believed that the fans were enjoying the open nature of the season.

"On balance I'm sure that people want a lack of predictability, you want to go to each event not knowing who's going to win, you want to go through the course of the weekend not sure what's going to happen in each session and you want to go through the race not knowing - and this is a race that is very difficult for all the reasons we know in terms of overtaking but it was still I think a pretty exciting race. So that's good, everyone one of our races this year I think has been tremendously exciting."

Paul Pogba said he left Manchester United because he was "disgusted" Sir Alex Ferguson picked a right-back ahead of him in midfield and revealed it caused the breakdown of his relationship with the former manager